Can you Come down? - Chambers, Oswald
Mark 9:229
the test of spiritual life is the power to descend; if we have power to rise only, there is something wrong. We all have had times on the mount when we have seen things from gods standpoint and we wanted to stay there; but if we are disciples of Jesus christ, he will never allow us to stay there. Spiritual selfishness makes us want to stay on the mount; we feel so good, as if we could do anything talk like angels and live like angels, if only we could stay there. But there must be the power to descend; the mountain is not the place for us to live, we were built for the valleys. This is one of the hardest things to learn because spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mount.
1. The sphere of exaltation
And peter answered and said to Jesus, master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for moses, and one for elias. (mark 9:5)
When god gives us a time of exaltation it is always exceptional. It has its meaning in our life with god, but we must beware lest spiritual selfishness wants to make it the only time. The sphere of exaltation is not meant to teach us anything. We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. , into character. We shall find that the spheres god brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something. There is a great danger in asking, what is the use of it? There is no use in it at all. If you want a life of usefulness, dont be a christian after our lords stamp; you will be much more useful if you are not. The cry for the standard of usefulness knocks the spiritual christian right out, he dare not touch it if he is going to remain true to his master. Take the life of our lord: for three years all he did was to walk about saying things and healing sick people a useless life, judged from every standard of success and of enterprise. If our lord and his disciples had lived in our day, they would have been put down as a most unuseful crowd. In spiritual matters we can never calculate on the line of what is the use of it? What is the use of being at a bible training college? Of learning psychology and ethics? Do something. Great danger lies along that line. The good is ever the enemy of the best. The mountaintop experiences are rare moments, but they are meant for something in the purposes of god. It was not until peter came to write his epistles that he realised the full purpose of his having been on the mount of transfiguration.
2. The sphere of humiliation
And one of the multitude answered and said, master, i have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and i spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not. (mark 9:1718)
The first thing the disciples met in the valley was a demon-possessed boy, and we have to live in the demon-possessed valley. God did not create Adam to live on the mountain; he made him of the dust of the earth, that was his glory. The mountaintop is an exceptional type of experience, we have to live down in the valley. After every time of exaltation we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they are, where things are neither beautiful nor poetic nor spiritual nor thrilling. The height of the mountaintop is measured by the drab drudgery of the valley. We never live for the glory of god on the mount, we see his glory there, but we do not live for his glory there; it is in the valley that we live for the glory of god. Our lord came down from the mount into the valley and went on to the cross where he was glorified; and we have to come down from the mount of exaltation into the drab life of the valley. It is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to god, and that is where our faithfulness has to be manifested. Most of us can do things if we are always at the heroic pitch; but god wants us at the drab, commonplace pitch, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship to him. We can all be thrilled by appeals to do things in an ecstatic way, by moments of devotion, but that is never the work of gods grace, it is the natural selfishness of our own hearts. We can all do the heroic thing, but can we live in the drab humiliating valley where there is nothing amazing, but mostly disaster, certainly humiliation, and emphatically everything drab and dull and mean? 6 that is where jesus christ lived most of his life. The reason we have to live in the valley is that the majority of people live there, and if we are to be of use to god in the world we must be useful from gods standpoint, not from our own standpoint or the standpoint of other people. If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us (mark 9:22). That is our condition when we are in the valley; we do not know god, we are full of scepticism. The great point of our life with god, and of our service for him in the world is that we get the scepticism rooted out of us, and it takes the valley of humiliation to root it out. Look back at your own experience and you will find that until you learned who jesus christ was, you were a cunning sceptic about his power. When you were on the mount you could believe anything, because it was in accordance with the selfishness of your nature, but what about the time when you were up against facts in the valley, up against questions which could not be answered? You may be perfectly able to give a testimony to sanctifica- tion, but what about the thing that is a humiliation to you? If you are without something that is a humiliation to you, i question whether you have ever come into a personal relationship with jesus christ. We are called to fellowship with his sufferings, and some of the greatest suffering lies in remaining powerless where he remained powerless. Had our lord been a man, he would have healed the boy at first, but he waited until the father was in the last ebb of despair if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. Am i patient enough in my faith in jesus christ to allow people to get to the last ebb of despair before they see what he can do? We step in in a thou- sand and one ways god never tells us to; we say we cannot bear to see god appear cruel, but god has to appear cruel from our standpoint. As disciples of jesus we have to learn not only what our lord is like on the mount of transfiguration, but what he is like in the valley of humiliation, where everything is giving the lie to his power, where the disciples are powerless, and where he is not doing anything.
3. The sphere of ministration
And he said unto them, this kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting. (mark 9:29)
the last time you were on the mount with god you saw that all power has been given unto jesus in heaven and on earth, are you going to be sceptical in the val- ley of humiliation? You have gone to god about the thing that is perplexing you over and over again and nothing has happened, why could not we cast him out? Our lord never gives an answer to questions of that description, because the answer lies in a personal relationship to himself. This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting, i. E. , by concentration and redoubled concentration on me. Prayer and fasting means concentration on god.
That is the one purpose for which we are in the world. Do get out of your ears the noisy cries of the christian world we are in do this and do that. Never! Be this and that, then i will do through you, says jesus. If thou canst (rv)is that what you say to me? All things are possible to him that believeth. At last the father got to the point of personal relationship with Jesuslord, i believe; help thou mine unbelief. We slander god by our very eagerness to work for him without knowing him. We must be able to mount up with wings as eagles, but we must know also how to come down. It is the coming down and the living down that is the power of the saint. Paul said, i can do all things through christ which strengtheneth me; watch the things he said he could do, they were all humiliating things. We have the idea that we are meant to work for god along the heroic line; we are meant to do un-heroic work for god in the martyr spirit. The sphere of humiliation is always the place of more satisfaction to jesus christ, and it is in our power to refuse to be humili- ated, to say, no, thank you, i much prefer to be on the mountaintop with god. Do i believe that god engineers my circumstances, that it is he who brings me each day into contact with the people i meet? Am i faithful enough to him to know that all i meet with in the ordinary machinery of every day by chance or hap- hazard is absolutely under his dominance and rule? Do i face the humiliation which sometimes comes in my contact with people with a perfect knowledge that god is working out his own will? You are brought face to face with difficult cases, and nothing happens externally, yet you know that emancipation has been given, because you are con- centrated on jesus christ.
Our line of service is to see that there is nothing between jesus and ourselves. Is there? If there is you must get through it, not by mounting up, not by ignoring it in irritation, but by facing it and going clean through it straight into the presence of jesus. Then that very thing and all you have been through in connection with it, glorifies jesus in a way you will never know till you see him face to face.
When we look at our lives in this way, we under- stand what jesus meant when he said, he that believeth in me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water. Why should we ignore what jesus christ says? Why should we take our stamp of christian service from any one other than himself ? We have to maintain our personal relationship to jesus christ, the attitude of a child, and to maintain the same attitude in everything and to everyone, towards every individual and circumstance we meet, and never be deflected. That is the meaning of prayer and fasting.